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Will the Celtics be challenged this season? | Good Word with Goodwill

Yahoo Sports senior NBA reporter Vincent Goodwill is joined by Bomani Jones to discuss Boston’s chances of going back-to-back this season. Hear the full conversation on “Good Word with Goodwill” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

At some point, everybody gets tested and the Celtics were not tested last year.

I suspect that they'll be tested this year and not because there's an opponent that matches up to them.

But can you rev it up to that level two straight years?

And maybe they got the coach to do it, that's gonna rev it up for them.

But I suspect they'll be tested this year.

Yeah, like I feel like their greatest opponent last year was them because all the way until the end until poor Zenga's came back, they still looked unserious, right?

So playing against Indiana, for example, they swept Indiana but Indiana was decimated by injuries and those games still felt entirely too close, too close.

They felt way too close.

I feel like the like, I think the heat series didn't really pay too much attention, but they lost the game in that one.

That felt like it didn't make much sense.

They lost the game against Cleveland.

That felt like it didn't make much sense.

But when they beat Dallas, they beat them right, like they beat them, but up until then they looked like the team that we had criticisms for all these years because they just didn't feel like a serious outfit.

Now, they are champions.

Their two best players have reasons to feel angry and slighted.

Their fourth best player got to spend the summer playing in the Olympics.

Jason Tatum simply went to Paris.

He did not get to play.

Um There he got a free trip dog.

He needed to be out there, had a need to go tap him and be like, baby, just soak it in and enjoy it.

Um, but this is this year they should, they should run deep.

So I'd say a counterpoint.

There.

You talk about the 91 Bulls and you, yes, in 92 they got pushed to seven by the Knicks.

But in 92 that was also probably the best version of that team.

They ran through the league, ran through them.

But, yeah, somebody's gonna show up in the postseason and I don't think they're gonna have as good a luck this time and who they draw in the postseason as they did last time.

Yeah, that's an odd one.

That's a, that's an interesting one that I'm, I'm curious about and we're not gonna see the answer for that during the regular season by and large.

I think they're gonna have a really good regular season because, because there's so many bad teams at the bottom of the east that you're gonna see the, the play team be a team that's really, really bad.

And I think they're gonna feast on the teams like that and the numbers are going to look good.

The advanced numbers might look good.

I wonder how they're gonna do against the really good teams this year.

I wonder how much they're gonna rev it up.